Anthology invites you to join us for a remarkable evening of performance and reflection with Intermedia pioneer Elaine Summers.

In 1964 Jonas Mekas wrote in the Village Voice that "What I saw at Judson Church (Elaine Summers's FANTASTIC GARDENS) last Wednesday was by far the most successful and most ambitious attempt to use the many possible combinations of film and live action to create an aesthetic experience."

Now 40-plus-years later, Elaine is still hard at work on her multi-disciplinary projects. Intermedia, in her words, is like a rainbow, a phenomenon requiring two elements to produce the third. Tonight's program explores Elaine's Intermedia works from the 1960s-1980s, as reinterpreted for the theater space at Anthology.

WALKING DANCE FOR ANY NUMBER (1968, 12 minutes, 16mm, b&w)
This Intermedia performance, which premiered at the NYU Theater in 1968, is for two to ten dancers and four 16mm films running simultaneously. Each dancer is provided with a dance score based on walking, which relates to the film images, within which they are free to improvise.

"If only all intermedia experiments were as enjoyable as this"
- John Percival, London Times

ILLUMINATED WORKINGMAN (1975, 8 minutes, 16mm, color)
An Intermedia dance-and-film performance interpreting the movement of people at work, which premiered in 1975 at Niagara Square, Buffalo. The film was projected across a 120-foot-wide screen suspended on the columns of City Hall.

"The piece was a celebration of the creative energy of the proletariat; it connects with the concerns of Chinese Art." - Mark Savitt, SOHO WEEKLY NEWS

CROW'S NEST / SOLITARY GEOGRAPHY (1980, 18 minutes, 16mm, color)
An Intermedia installation of dance, film and a cubed screen construction, originally produced for the First Intermedia Festival at the Guggenheim Museum in 1980. The original music score was composed by Pauline Oliveros and some of the first performers included famed butoh dancer Min Tanaka.

"My memory is of a ravishingly beautiful environment which some extraordinary people explore, pass through, dwell in..." - Deborah Jowitt, VILLAGE VOICE